U.K. police nab Fluffi Bunni hacker

By Gillian Law and Paul Roberts, IDG News Service APRIL 30, 2003 Content Type: Story Source: IDG News Service

Members of the U.K. Computer Crime Unit arrested a suspected member of the notorious hacker group Fluffi Bunni yesterday.

Lynn Htun, 24, was arrested by U.K. Metropolitan Police when they recognized him on a stand at the InfoSec computer security show in London yesterday. Htun was arrested on charges of nonappearance in Guildford Crown Court in Guildford, England, on forgery charges, Metropolitan Police spokesman Nick Jordan said today.

He was due to appear in Guildford Crown Court today, Jordan said.

Fluffi Bunni is believed to be responsible for a series of attacks against the Web sites of U.S. computer security organizations. After compromising sites, the group left a picture of a stuffed pink rabbit as its calling card.

Fluffi Bunni carried out 23 attacks between June 2000 and January 2002, according to digital security company Mi2g Ltd. in London. Those included attacks on www.mcdonalds.co.uk in February 2001, www.sans.org and www.attrition.org in July 2001, and www.securityfocus.com in November 2001, Mi2g spokesman Jan Andresen said Wednesday.

The Metropolitan Police stressed that yesterday's arrest was purely on nonappearance charges and didn't say how its computer-crime-unit officers recognized Htun.

Htun, who used the online name "Danny-Boy," was known within hacking circles as a member of Fluffi Bunni, according to Rafael Nunez, a senior research scientist at Scientech de Venezuela in Caracas who is known online as "RaFa."

However, the group had a "fluid" membership and included other prominent hackers outside the U.K., he said.

Htun may have initially come to the attention of U.K. authorities monitoring Internet Relay Chat channels frequented by hackers. He had a reputation as a "packet monkey," someone responsible for conducting denial-of-service attacks against Web sites, Nunez said.

"We're really happy," said Alan Paller, director of research at SANS Institute Inc., which had its Web page defaced by Fluffi Bunni in July 2001.

Htun's identity was known to authorities soon after the SANS attack, Paller said, but for some reason, movement toward an arrest was slow. "We're ecstatic that he didn't get out of the U.K. before he was arrested," he said.